Statistics can be sliced and diced in several ways. Depending on where you stand and what you want to make of them, you can take the same set of numbers and come up with drastically different interpretations. Nowhere is this truer than with election results — party spinmeisters can juggle the numbers to their own advantage.
The final tally in the Gujarat Assembly elections is a good example. The BJP is focusing on the hat-trick by Narendra Modi, declaring that this conclusively proves his enduring popularity in the state. The Congress has pointed out that it has won more seats than last time and that the BJP has ended up with two less. Both are right. Dig deeper and some other details emerge — in Saurashtra, the BJP has done badly, while the state’s Congress chief lost his seat. Surely that should be a cause for worry for both parties.
The BJP is right of course in claiming that its victory in Gujarat shows that Mr Modi is hugely popular in his state. But is this to his credit or to the party’s? And is there a second line of leadership if — or when — he decides to pack his bag and move to the capital to project himself as a national leader? As the celebrations of this victory wind down, these are questions that the BJP’s national leadership and those in Nagpur should be thinking hard about. Any party should be worried about over-dependence on one man.
Mr Modi’s performance in Gujarat has come as a big boost to a party that has been buffeted with serious problems in recent months. The Yeddyurappa walk-out and the charges against BJP president Nitin Gadkari are but two of the major issues that the BJP has had to contend with and both can have a long-lasting impact. B.S. Yeddyurappa has the potential to cause immense damage to the BJP in Karnataka, where the party won 110 seats last time. It could affect its chance of emerging as the single-largest party in the next general elections. As for Mr Gadkari, he may have survived thanks to his RSS benefactors reposing their faith in him and forcing all the BJP leaders to fall in line, but the so-called “clean chit” he got is of no value. He still has to answer questions about his involvement with the Purti group and the more the BJP remains in denial, the more harm this scandal can cause in the coming months.
Apart from these, the party also has to confront systemic challenges that could threaten its revival in time to fight the Congress and the UPA. The first is the rivalry among the top leadership of the party for the pole position. Even without Mr Modi threatening to gatecrash the upper echelons, the front-benchers of the BJP are at surreptitious war with each other. Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and most of all L.K. Advani are all keen to emerge as the sole choice to lead the party in the elections and implicitly be crowned “prime ministerial candidate”. Mr Gadkari is not far behind, and waiting in the shadowy wings are chief ministers like Shivraj Chauhan who must be wondering why they don’t get the attention that Mr Modi does; after all Mr Chauhan, too, has been winning regularly and he has no riot taint to his name. While hailing Mr Modi for his fantastic performance, they will all now be planning how best to trip him or at least keep him confined to Gujarat. This internal dissension has to be contained if the party wants to present a united front.
The second major problem are the allies. Without Mr Modi too the BJP does not offer much confidence as an outfit that will win 180 seats or so that will make it a strong claimant to form the government. With Mr Modi at its helm, whatever his fans may think, the minority vote will shift away en masse and any ally, like Nitish Kumar who doesn’t disassociate from the BJP fast enough, will have to pay the price. There is also no guarantee, as Mr Modi’s supporters believe, that the Hindu vote will consolidate behind the BJP if he were to emerge as the party leader. Mr Modi has no traction in other parts of the country, as became evident in Himachal Pradesh where the party was trounced despite Mr Modi campaigning. Keeping the allies happy will be a prime
consideration for the BJP if it wants the NDA to remain viable.
Most important of all is the fundamental question that gets brushed aside in all this talk of Mr Modi as a prime ministerial candidate — can the BJP win the requisite number of seats to even stake a claim? At this stage, the party has almost no presence in the east and its sole bastion in the south, Karnataka, is fast slipping out of its hands. To reach say, the 180 mark, it will have to win handsomely in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab, and also pick up seats in Haryana, Goa, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh. Of these, it is now number four in Uttar Pradesh and in Maharashtra it will have to fight not only the Congress but also the NCP and its own ally, the Shiv Sena. The theory among Modi supporters is that under his leadership the BJP can win handsomely everywhere; that is a pipe dream.
It is obvious, therefore, that with or without Mr Modi at the helm, the BJP is facing some very difficult times ahead. He may galvanise the rank and file to some extent but the deep internal problems will not disappear. For that the party will have to work towards a cogent and focused strategy that will involve putting individual differences aside and keeping the allies happy. It’s all very well to fantasise about the day when Mr Modi will rule this country, but that is not going to happen if the BJP cannot get itself together. For the moment it is time to celebrate Mr Modi’s victory in Gujarat, but it can at best paper over the serious fissures in the BJP, not repair them.